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What I'm Watching: Killing Eve

 

(T


here are some mild spoilers here, so if you want to start watching the show with a completely clean slate, move along).

The weird part about Killing Eve is that I find myself rooting for Villanelle or Oksana or whatever the hell her name really is. Villanelle is a psychopath. I don’t generally find myself rooting for psychopaths. But Jodie Comer is just so much fun as Villanelle. She has just the right touch of menace, and humor. There have been other villains who inhabit the humor mantle well. Just look at most of the evildoers in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. But Comer takes it to another level. You can’t take your eyes off her. It is like watching a master class in acting.  The character is also as unpredictable as a . . . well, a psychopath. It is the unpredictability that keeps the show fresh. Even a funny villain who is always in pursuit of evil can get tiresome. Villanelle is never tiresome because we never know what she is going to do next. But it is not like her unpredictability is just random nonsense. You can eventually connect the dots and see the method to her madness (so to speak). I keep thinking to myself, “what a fun part to play.” But great actors make great parts look like they are fun to play. That is part of their job. I don’t really know if Jodie Comer was having fun, or if it was exhausting, painstaking work, like acting often is, but I like to believe it was fun.

The less flashy role in the series is the part of Eve played by Sandra Oh. She is in an unenviable position having to play opposite Jodie Comer’s Villanelle. Eve goes from exasperated to tired to confused to angry to love-sick, over and over again. Eve is very smart in some ways, clueless in others. She loves her husband . . .  but she also kind of has a crush on Villanelle. Eve works for the British intelligence service. They are tracking an international organization of bad guys who Villanelle works for, so naturally British intelligence is interested in her. As the story progresses, Eve begins to get glimmers of how Villanelle’s mind works.

This show also has a great supporting cast including Fiona Shaw who plays Carolyn Martens (Eve’s boss). Carolyn is obviously very much in command, and has a brilliant mind, and yet, we, the audience, aren’t sure what to make of her. We think she is a good guy, but she does some ethically questionable things (even for a spy). She is wonderfully enigmatic. Even her own children don’t know what to make of her. Another character that is enigmatic is Villanelle’s handler Konstantin, played with relish by Kim Bodnia. Initially, he seems like a bad guy, but that gets complicated too. Lots of complications in this series, and in this case, that is a good thing. It keeps the audience wanting more, and at the edge of our seats.

The series is based on the Villanelle novels by Luke Jennings which were adapted for television by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (of Fleabag fame). Waller Bridge wrote many of the episodes and she has developed an interesting mix of drama and hilarity. There is plenty of drama. Lots of characters die, including people that the audience like. But when this show wants to be funny, it is extremely funny.

In my humble opinion, this show is perfection.

Star Liner

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